Professor Wokeck attended the universities of Hamburg and Freiburg i. Br., Germany, and passed the state's exam in History and English (Staatsexamen), Hamburg University, 1973). She began studies in the United States in 1973 and earned a Ph.D. in history from Temple University, Philadelphia, in 1982.

She joined the Papers of William Penn, a select letterpress project, in 1983 and was one of the editors of the third and fourth volumes of the five-volume series, The Paper of William Penn. She was the founding editor and director of the Biographical Dictionary of Early Pennsylvania, a project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (1986-91), and co-editor and author of the first volume of Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania. She joined IUPUI as an assistant professor of history in 1991, pursuing research and teaching interests in early American, immigration, and women's history. She was promoted to associate professor in 1997 and full professor in 2004, with adjunct appointments in American Studies, Women's Studies, and New Media.

In 1999 she published Trade in Strangers: the Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America, a reflection of her interest in the history of the North Atlantic World in the 17th and 18th centuries. She was awarded the Alwin S. Bynum Award for Excellence in Academic Mentoring in 1996; was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 1997-98; and is a graduate of the Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration. In 1999, she joined the Santayana Edition, a critical edition project supported by the NEH, which she has directed since 2004. She served as editor of the journal of the Association for Documentary Editing from 2001 to 2007. She was named Chancellor's Professor in 2009.